1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical connector used in the connection of optical fibers.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2006-62913, filed Mar. 8, 2006, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, an optical connector has been propose, of which assembling operation can be carried out at a connection site other than a factory. For such an optical connector, an optical connector including a ferrule that houses and fastens an optical fiber in advance after the distal end surface thereof has been polished and a clamping portion disposed on the back portion (the position on the side opposite to the distal end surface) of this ferrule has been proposed. In this optical connector, in the clamping portion the optical fiber (below, the inner optical fiber) on the ferrule side and another connection optical fiber (below, the iron optical fiber) that abuts this optical fiber are maintained in an abutted and connected state by being clamped in split elements of the clamping portion. Here, because the size of the clamping portion is small, a dedicated tool that carried out the opening and closing operation of the elements (optical fiber tool) has been proposed (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2002-23006, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2002-55259, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2005-99706).
At the same time, during the assembly of this type of optical connector, it is very important that the back end of the inner optical fiber housed in advance and the distal end of the insertion optical fiber to be inserted are reliably abutted. Thus, conventionally, the reliable abutment of the distal end of the insertion optical fiber with the back end of the inner optical fiber has been confirmed visually. Concretely, by visually confirming the bending of the insertion optical fiber that occurs when the distal end of the insertion optical fiber is abutted against the inner optical fiber, it is confirmed that the optical fibers are correctly abutting each other.
However, when the insertion optical fiber is attached to the optical fiber after bending in the manner described above, the following inconveniences occur. Specifically, because a portion of the insertion optical fiber bends, a misalignment occurs between the optical axis of the insertion optical fiber and the optical axis of the inner optical fiber. In addition, when the optical fiber is bent, at the bending location, loss may occur in the propagated light. In addition, when the ached optical connector (the male optical connector) is fitted into the other adaptor (the female optical connector), the insertion optical fiber described above is generally retracted. Thereby, the bending of the optical fiber (coated optical fiber) is further increased, and the inconveniences described above become severe.